Coach Mike Pestorious and his swimmers of the Somerset Valley YMCA decided to take on the daunting task of completing a 2000 IM– that’s right, a 500 of each stroke.
In coach Pestorious’ words, “Coach Booj and I thought a good Saturday morning main set would be the 2000 IM. 500 meters of LEGAL fly, back, breast and free. We didn’t want to ask the kids to do anything that we wouldn’t do, so we took on the challenge during our normal Friday morning swim. We call our M/W/F morning swims “swim lab” because that is where we work on drills and sets to give the kids during workouts. As you can imagine, our intervals are slower and the sets are shorter than what our SVY Gold 2 group finishes, but we at least test the concepts.
The kids LOVED the challenge and all of them finished it — most of them legally (Matt S, Mark R). The ones who missed it wanted us to give them a lane on Sunday to complete it. Too bad Sunday was a broken 500 set. They can try the IM challenge later. Our top finisher, Nate, completed the 2000 meters in just under 30 minutes.
BTW, coach Booj and I swam a 600 free instead of a 500 free because we are not so good at counting.”
Check it out below!
I know that this was about four years ago, but I just came across this story. I am also on SVY ( Just aged up to 11/12s) so does that mean I will be doing this in a couple of years? If so I am READY for it.
Well done Coach Mike and Coach Booj! Continuing the tradition of leading by example at SVY. I swam for SVY Swim Team Head Coach Vince Bruns early to mid 1970s at SVY in Somerville. He was a great Coach and terrific swimmer. He was in his early and mid 30s and would often enter AAU Senior swim meets doing 52/53 in 100 fly.
There is nothing more motivating than watching your coach lead from the front and do the same set. Well done guys…..I had a coach like that once; he was an Olympian, 2 yrs out of the pool, with a decent sized beer belly, and he would get in the pool and kick our tails! This was always preceded by him screaming “OK, let’s get up and Boogie!!!”
The 2K IM CHALLENGE has been born! *Coaches must participate
This is Coach Mike. Thanks for the positive comments from some. For those of you who are throwing shade, come by my practice and I will teach you correct stroke technique so that you too can finish a whole 500 fly. You must be terrified of the 200 fly or 400 IM. Fortunately, none of my athletes are.
Best thing you can get out of a set like this is confidence. If you’ve completed a 2000IM in practice why should you fear a 400IM? I think this was the main point of doing it.
Studs
“Most” of them finished it legally…but how many shoulder injuries?
Your experience must be with pretty fragile swimmers if one 2000 yard swim is creating shoulder injuries. Maybe these kids have put in the work to handle it as their coaches expected.
Sounds like you have an old school ‘no pain no gain’ mentality.
We’re talking about one 2000 Im. Not sure how old school that is. Yes there will be some discomfort for about 6-8 minutes of butterfly but that is it depending on how hard the swimmer goes. 30 minutes of work tops. Is that grueling these days?
I’d like to see what constitutes a difficult workout for you if this is too intimidating or dangerous from your perspective.